Friday, August 26, 2005

Do like Elvis did

It will scramble up your head and drag your brain about,Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out. - Bob Dylan

I haven't been watching much television recently, but a couple of weeks ago we had digital cable installed. Now that we receive FoxNews and MSNBC, I know what American's are talking about when they talk about Aruba.

There needn't be a media conspiracy here, not beyond the ones we already know, to account for the obsessive-compulsive coverage of this Summer's showcase disappearances. While the Bush White House appears to jump the shark - it's falling in the ratings, but who's going to step up and cancel it? - sympathetic executives naturally counterprogram. The networks, staffed by intelligence assets and owned by oligarchs and arms peddlers, run instead homespun mysteries to consume the attention and care of the citizen-audience.

(Though sometimes, such stories may serve even as distractions from themselves. I recall tuning out as much as possible during the saturation coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey investigation. The story, I thought, had no great significance beyond its own tragedy, and the morbidity of the coverage left me only depressed and uninformed. I just didn't want to hear it. Now, from this station down the rabbit hole, I wonder whether I didn't hear enough. Or perhaps, hear it correctly.)

I found this consideration of the Mystery of the Missing Persons Coverage interesting; that "the most effective kinds of distraction or sublimation are those that echo or harmonize with the concerns they seek to distract us from."

People are disappearing, and not just in Aruba. They're being lifted right off their American feet and bundled off to Homeland gulags. Constitutionality isn't what it used to be, and what it used to be isn't what it presumed to be. Common sense is absent, mass demonstrations go unreported, and invisible ballots go missing. So maybe it's perfectly understandable why Americans should be trained to transfer their anxieties to Natalee Holloway or Olivia Newton John's boyfriend. There, their worries will be rewarded with neither demands nor expectations placed upon them. Unlike their political and even parapolitical concerns, which threaten to call people out of their armchairs, even if their worries haven't sharpened beyond a vague sense of dread.

What to do? Like Elvis, you can shoot out the television, but America has left the building. Left behind is an America-shaped void that a lot of people still want to call home, because it plays one on TV.

1480 Comments:

I got truly disgusted with much of television programming about 11 years ago, when I still had cable. This was around the time when MTV went to its current all-moronic-sitcoms-all-the-time format. I haven't had cable since then. Until I can choose which stations I pay for, I refuse to pay for the crap I won't watch.

In the years since I have discovered that CNN employed army psyops interns at its Atlanta programming offices, and Pentagon and government offcials regularly 'consult' for Fox programming scripts and even Hollywood screenplays. What's sad is that decades of socialized public education have dulled American minds to accept this unconstitutional propaganda as ordinary.

That's why cops, lawyers and doctors are the most common protagonists in sitcoms these days: they're the enablers to the ruling elites whom the public is subliminally brainwashed into identifying with instead of their own fellow 'proles.' If you take the view that nothing you see on TV is accidental (which it's not), you can get a better feel for how TV is the most insidious social engineering tool out there today.

"What to do? Like Elvis, you can shoot out the television, but America has left the building. Left behind is an America-shaped void that a lot of people still want to call home, because it plays one on TV."

That's why cops, lawyers and doctors are the most common protagonists in sitcoms these days: they're the enablers to the ruling elites whom the public is subliminally brainwashed into identifying with instead of their own fellow 'proles.'

Exactly! I've been feeling this way for some time now. And it's not just sitcoms; look at all the drama shows -- doctors, hospitals and emergency rooms, lawyers, the court system, cops, police detectives, special investigators, sexual crimes, heart-pounding mass-destruction episodals, the very White House itself...

All this "programming" glorifies the doctors, lawyers, police, and mythologically-democratic ruling establishment (in other words, the very pillars of the NWO/globalist empire) while simultaneously indoctrinating young and old into the small, confined box of prepackaged officially-approved total bullshit "reality" that only doctors can heal the sick and that "cures" don't exist (how many times have you heard a doctor, or a lucky actor being overpaid to play a doctor on TV, say "we don't like to use the word 'cure'..."), or that the "bad guys" are the lawbreakers and the "good guys" are the enforcers, or that democracy still exists and looks and works exactly like CNN and your grammar school textbook tells you it is.

I wonder how long it will be before the all-seeing eye of CBS casts its dark gaze upon the selfless, sexy lives of, say, pharmaceutical researchers at some fictitious Big Pharma research lab, just to perpetuate the myth that they actually do give a shit about human suffering and are doing everything they can to end it. I wonder if the treatment for the pilot episode will be pitched to the network by a close personal friend of the CEO of Merck?

Think about it: What is the pinnacular profession for a girl of "traditional" upbringing to seek in a prospective husband? What does her mother wish she had married instead of a social worker or naturopath? Of which professions does she most vociferously voice her breathless approval? What does Dad want you to go to school for? What could your son or daughter be if they really apply themselves? Why, they could be a Doctor, or a Lawyer, or maybe even President!

And furthermore, the doctors and laywers are also the highest paid professions.

Not schoolteachers, who almost all live on the edge of poverty.

Not social workers, who scoop up the roadkill of life and at least try to nurse them back to health before releasing them back into the wild.

Not those front-line cops who put their lives on the line every day to combat the idiotic "war" on some drugs, those being the ones that are most profitable to the CIA/Bonesmen/etc. who profit the most from their hard drugs being illicit, black-market items over which "wars" are waged.

MTV was a magickal laboratory, where all of the strategems of amnesiac broadcasting were tried out 2 decades ago, carefully calibrated to the pace of contemporary USA. All of the "reality" shows we see are the bastard children of 'the real world' and 'road rules,' where children carp over the little deaths of rejection, high consumerism and cultural posturing.

Some people continue to be shocked about TV's subservience to the CNP/AEI cabal. they keep expecting today's scandalous revelation to prompt every anchor and pundit to rush on-camera and squeal "holy shit everybody, something's gone very wrong in the heart of our national institutions!" "This just in: Capitalism Kills." When the next 'domestic event' happens, we'll forget all over again about the media's credibility gap, and their historic role in selling us the policies of plutocracy. Those who refuse to forget may become recalcitrant, and they will join a long line of scapegoats to be maligned and pilloried by the press, another enigma to be blurred and disciplined.

Centuries ago, such a project required confinement outside the viewpoint of the commoners, hidden away in a penitentiary. The magick of TV is to now impregnate our mundane reality with more meaning than we can ignore or refute without expending great effort to justify the subversion of 'consensus.' This is why we live in the age of the simulacra, where what we see resists all interrogation, because we believe Paula Zahn's conspiracy stories more than our own eyes. One can imagine the framework of debate surrounding tommorrow's stubborn dissidents: "What would Jesus do? liquidation or enslavement?"

Why, oh why, is there so much dang TV news coverage on those missing women who happen to be young, white, middle-class, and cute? Up to 600 Mexican women have been abducted, murdered, and dumped in Ciudad Juarez in the past decade. I don't see them on the news much. But every single day, that ditz from Aruba is the sole topic of discussion on Nancy Grace and other "news" programs. Prostitutes disappear by the dozens from nearly every major Canadian city in any given year, but the cases that grab our attention usually involve just one woman. She is always beautiful and white, with a home in the 'burbs, an SUV, and the other accoutrements of middle-class Canadian/American life. We are somehow supposed to feel more sympathy for her family than for the impoverished families that lose their daughters to prostitution and drugs every day.The same principles apply to missing children. This is much worse. If a white child vanishes, the world stops and the media raises its hackles. If a black child vanishes...wait, when was the last time you heard of a black child vanishing? Hmmm. Maybe three, four years ago. Yet black children are missing. Children of every ethnic background are missing. Check out the Center for Missing and Exploited Children website if you don't believe me.It's entirely up to as media consumers to demand balanced news on missing persons. We have to change the channel or pass by the newsstand when sensationalized cases are being thrust in our faces. We can't humour this kind of behaviour anymore. While we're glued to newscasts about JonBenet Ramsey and Laci Peterson, women and children are disappearing from our very own streets.

Up to 600 Mexican women have been abducted, murdered, and dumped in Ciudad Juarez in the past decade. I don't see them on the news much. But every single day, that ditz from Aruba is the sole topic of discussion on Nancy Grace and other "news" programs.

How True.

I think we should take a poll.

How much money would you have to be paid to have sex with Nancy Grace one time? (To be fair this poll is open to both men and women.)a: $5,000 to $10,000b: $10,000 to $100,000c: $100,000 to $1,000,000d: Over $1,000,000e: No amount of money is worth it.

That's entertrainment! There's a reason they call it programming.Those who have never stopped watching T.V. don't realize that it doesn't reflect the discussion and culture, but rather, it shapes and contains it. I got rid of my T.V. a few years back, and now I won't even enter a room where one is on.

It's been this way for years, the evil drug known as television has long been the propaganda machine for governments, manipulating emotions and behavior, stimulating vapid consumerism. It's addiction probably surpasses even Nicotine as we all look to escape, seek heroes or justice we are forbidden in real life.

These are different days however, and the corporate media are losing their mesmerism of the masses. Now grown weary of being patently bullshitted, being told who's their enemy and who are their friends. Sick of being sold shit and having them tell us it's cotton candy. Moreover people are painfully demanding the arrival of fervor, of authenticity. Not a promenade of soulless, decadence and offensively rich slumming in front of those of us who have to actually WORK for a living. The Roman's called it 'Bread and Circus' carefully crafted to distract from economic despair and an viciously criminal empire.

They never lied to us when they referred to it as programming. The shows they dumped in the public consumption trough often had the stink of intelligence manipulation. The show S.W.A.T. was droned out to the public to showcase Louis O. Guiffrida's newly formed domestic counter-insurgency unit. S.W.A.T. was born from a series of martial operations code-named Cable Splicer I & II, as a direct governmental response to a growing radicalized resistance movement.

Now they intended to inflict a FX series called "Over There" about the Iraq war from the eyes of soldiers, their loved ones and the frontline. Thankfully, a war-weary America regurgitated this psy-ops program and it tanked almost immediately. The X-Files, Lone Gunmen and Millenium were generated to counter a growing interest in conspiracies and the organization of militia groups. They flagrantly obfuscated real criminal events by linking it to ridiculously outlandish monsters, aliens and the "rogue" elements in the government scenario. Don't get me wrong, some of the shows were really great, and at times the information was right on key. I just think that mixing truth with lies and fantasy, formed an amalgamation that made all but the diehard of researchers and viewers, chuck it all out with the bathwater.

The point I'm trying to make is that their negative agit-prop, Soma-vision is failing. Is it because the masses of us are seeing that the empire has no clothes on? I think that people are slowly starting to wipe the collective sleep from their eyes. All of their media psy-ops venues are drying up. Movie theaters are emptying out, the record industry is dying from self-inflicted wounds and people are turning their backs on the corporate newspeak whores at CNN, FOXNews, etc. The puppetmasters are at war with the citizenry and the best way to resist is through total non-compliance.

JUST SAY NO to their dogshit and defy their wet-dream measures to turn us into disposable consumers and state-owned chattle.

Mass up and say fuck you oil magnates and have Gas-Out Thursdays. Giftless Christmas, organized sick-outs from work, No-TV weekends, etc. Start drying up the war chest they're using to enslave and control us. We're all funding their domestic and international terror operations and great number of it is totally optional.

Resistance is growing and they are feeling the heat and fear from Latin America, Asia and even right here in the U.S. with people like Cindy Sheehan. Even Venezuelan leaders like Hugo Chavez are standing up to the world's predators and fighting back on a number of fronts. Quiet as it's kept, there's a backlash begining to happen as they attempt to inflict their fascism and bring on a Fourth Reich.

There may indeed be deeper mysteries about why some people have disappeared. However, why don't people also consider the statistically more probable reasons. For the young woman who disappeared in Aruba, the story goes that she was drinking with a bunch of natives at a bar (presumably something alcoholic) for several hours, and she later asked to be dropped off at the beach. I live in Hawaii on the most touristed island of Oahu (where Waikiki is) where there are are about 85 deaths a year from accidental drownings at the beach -- about half tourist and have locals. The most likely explanation for the woman's disappearance/death is accidental drowning with alcohol use as a likely contributor. Could this possibility be any more obvious except to perhaps a beach lifeguard?

What to do? Like Elvis, you can shoot out the television, but America has left the building. Left behind is an America-shaped void that a lot of people still want to call home, because it plays one on TV.

That was awesome. Also, isn't it part of the journalism cycle never to run anything of huge consequence in august? That's why there's a Mom-off this month. But the missing persons thing is creepy.

2 models went missing in Montreal recently. One guy served in Iraq. Last I recall, Homolka's boss wasn't answering questions about a cult he's possibly involved in. Maybe there's a connection there.

Case in point, I've been watching reruns of soap from Argentina lately.. and just last week they introduced [insert sinister music] a group of men that say they control the world. All the corporate bosses are depicted as jerks, and the heros are the servants and poor. Haven't seen a storyline like that in the US since.. I forgot.

There is at least one thing the toob is good for. If you stay objective, it sure lets you know what the sleeping people are being taught to think. You can't win a battle if you don't know where the target is.

The simulation..., the "parallel track"..., the posturing concern..., the simultaneous drill...,

the camoflage of a mobius reality where the "crossover point" to counter-reality isn't easily detected. What is isn't; what isn't is. Success lies in the ability to implicate everyone, at whatever level, in the counter-reality.

Integral to this is the general "virtualization" of reality.

Fiction can reveal every plot twist because it "isn't real", while reality itself is transformed into a virtual, ahistorical treadmill where nothing does or can happen, because the "real world", by definition, is a synthesized state of normalcy. There are no connections to be made, no precedence or external facts to reference, and no reason to do so.

It's funny, stuff I said, or often didn't say but confided to my journal, nigh onto three decades ago now I read some stranger writing on the Internet which didn't exist then in almost identical terms. I never did think it was me, I knew this society was screwed up long before I knew anything about precisely how, but it's nice to know that I was on the right track. Even though nothing I did made any difference to the society at large, and acting on my beliefs left me pretty well marginalized.

I must say, I had no idea Olivia Newton John's boyfriend was missing. But then it wasn't my turn to watch him. (He probably got drunk and fell overboard. I remember my mom telling me about that happening to a fellow passenger on a ferryboat that used to go between Cleveland and Detroit in the 1940s or so...he was last seen sitting on a railing after having a few drinks.)

As for Natalee Holloway, the town she lives in is one of the richest in the entire USA. 'Nuf said. (Not that rich people should lose their children, I'm not that callous, and it does appear the Arubans screwed up the investigation...only that if you're going to make a nationwide hoohah about one missing person do it for all of them, and maybe most would get found who weren't fishbait in the Caribbean.)

I have to say though that sometimes situations are not what they seem. Today I saw a woman sitting in downtown Palo Alto in front of a theater and restaurant with a cardboard sign saying "1 day from homeless." Everyone was studiously ignoring her. I'm flat broke myself but I'm familiar with local social services so I stopped to tell her about resources she could turn to. All she did was 'yes but' me and told me the free dinners at the local Catholic church weren't very good. (A friend who went through a rough spot a few years back had told me the food was so good he was sorry when he got back on his feet that he felt too guilty to pretend he was still needy in order to go chow down instead of cooking for himself.) Yes, I know that the safety net doesn't work. But I also know that I have never once talked to a homeless person who was interested in anything except me handing them cash. Now, if it's true she's got to come up with her rent next week and that's why she's panhandling, and she doesn't want my input on getting free food and other logistical assistance, fine. But I don't know if I hand someone cash if it's going for rent or food, or booze or drugs or cigarettes. I used to help a couple every time I went grocery shopping by asking them what I could buy for them inside, rather than giving them cash. On the other hand, I once gave a 'homeless' guy some money including one of those weird Susan B. Anthony dollars and told him to be careful not to mistake it for a quarter, and he said "Thanks, I collect these." Collect them? Hello? It's things like this that contribute to the myth--and I know it's a myth--spread around by people like Gaseous Nuisance, mayor of San Francisco, that the homeless are just substance addicts who prefer to drink/drug to getting themselves into treatment and into homes. I lived in my car for one horrible day and am probably about as empathetic to people in poverty as anyone can be (technically I'm one of them, I make about 45K less than what 'they' say you need to make in this area not to be considered poor) and after I talked to this lady I felt like I'd wasted my time by stopping.

The moral of this story is: no one and nothing can fix people who don't want to be fixed, whether it's airheads who watch cable all day or yuppies who tool around in hummers or poor people who critique free meals and come up with reasons why nothing you suggest helps other than some greenbacks in their jar.

That's why sometimes I think I'm just going to move out to a sheep ranch in remotest New Zealand, read poetry and birdwatch and enjoy the fresh air, and wait for the end of civilization to work its way to Godzone. Why the hell should I waste the last years of my life trying to save people from themselves? Because in the end you can't delude someone who isn't deluding themselves first. BushCo and the NWO hooks the American epsilon semi-moron in and manipulates him or her by his or her ignorance and greed and shallowness. I'm sorry, I don't believe that anyone can MAKE someone a moneygrubbing dolt unless the target is getting secondary gains out of it, and unfortunately the only way most moneygrubbing dolts find out that the Powers That Be don't care about them is to get a good kick in the slats. Even then that sort of person usually looks for a scapegoat instead of Questioning Authority and Reevaluating Their Basic Assumptions, to revive some terms from the Sixties.

Yes, I'm a pessimist. I think the American Empire is doomed. Something will survive, but nothing is going to wake the American people up before there is an econovironmentapocalypse of some sort. We still need to keep fighting as best we can but as Mike Ruppert said we all need a Plan B to save what we can for ourselves and those close to us when the feces hit the air conditioner big time.

I got rid of cable TV about two months ago and I've felt so much better. The garbage on TV these days is so insulting and stupid that I could no longer justify paying the outrageous fees to have it pumped into my abode. Elvis, known for his knack for "TCB" was definitely right in this regard. Maybe I should try and get a DEA badge also.

The best thing anyone in amerika can do for themselves is TURN OFF the devilvision.

I haven't watched 5 hours of television in the last 5 years. I use to advocate (for myself, anyway) keeping one eye semi-aware of what the current 'programming' was. Know thy enemy. Now, I don't even see the need to do that, you can FEEL and HEAR the 'program' all around you.

The devilvision has fed amerika her identity for decades. To the point that none of us truly knows where reality lies.

Nice comment by cassardra, no easy answers. And the sad fact that people my age have been shaped bt T.V. Even our subversive values (Jon Stewart, Micheal Moore, The Simpsons, etc.) are simply pain relievers from the big monster, used to make us think we are getting heard. It will shut us up , and we won't act, because our veiw is right there, on T.V. That's what paralizes us.

"Let me pose a question, though. What does it matter if people don't perceive the reality of how America actually works, so long as the people are content with their lives?

That certainly worked well for whites for the first 180 years or so. The thing is that the "reality of how America actually works" isn't a victimless crime--it just doesn't happen to affect YOU, personally.

Yea the American MSM loves to keep the American mind preoccupied with dark-skinned evil doers (be they Muslim or otherwise...ie. OJ, Michael Jackson, Kobe, Janet Jackson and now some nogoodniks from India)

Thank Fox news and its legions of zombies for the promotion of most of this crap.

I too have enjoyed this post, especially the last bit about "playing one on TV".

The above comment on "devilvision" made me think of a funny story about my now-deceased grandmother. In the last years of her life, her body had given up, so all she could do was watch TV. We always conversed in Spanish, even though I was/is only semi-fluent in the language. One day, maybe fifteen years ago, I was trying to explain why I couldn't bring myself to watch TV. I was searching for a simple way to say "TV is evil", but the Spanish word "malo" just didn't seem to communicate what I wanted, so instead I said "juguete del Diablo", which literally translates "Devil's toy". She laughed for half an hour.

Jeff, thank you for a fantastic post (as usual). Cassandra, like every con artist knows, you can't fool someone who doesn't participate in their own deception.

It's futile and exhausting to directly try to change people by using words.

It's much more effective to seek supportive people you like and feel comfortable with, share relevant information with each other, and use your energy to be a living example of your beliefs and values. "By their fruits you shall know them."

Speaking of fruits, that's where corporate media comes in. It hides or reinterprets the "fruits" (ie consequences) or, failing that, thrills and distracts citizens, effectively neutralizing them as participants in their own destiny.

That way, our masters get to run things as they see fit, without our sentimental, "quaint" ideas thwarting their plans.

After all, corporations acting to enrich themselves have caused terrible wars, a poisoned planet, a rapidly growing gap between the obscenely rich tiny minority and the desperately poor majority...and that's just SOME of the things we KNOW about.

As people are downsized or relocated, as they move, move, move to seek work or to find love, or to retire, or as they escape fearfully into their cocoons, society breaks down into discrete particles with little or no connection to each other.

Have you noticed that as ties between individuals are weakened, those between individuals and mega-corporations are correspondingly strengthened?

For decades, locally-owned businesses have been gradually replaced by huge, impersonal chains. An even greater menace is the merger between government, multinational corporations and the centralized media.

Decisions about content and editorial policy in local newspapers, radio and tv stations are being made by corporate bosses who answer to their shareholders, not the community they serve.

At the risk of anthropomorphizing corporations, they are strengthening themselves by increasing the ties that bind them to each other (SYNERGIZING!!!) at the same time that they are insinuating themselves between individual citizens.

Even the local church is being replaced by corporate mega-churches, with the local preacher or priest who'd been to your home or at least knew your name, replaced by politically and corporately-connected televangelists and their telemarketing minions.

One consequence of our alienation from one another is that we are more receptive to the dehumanized and distorted image of the "other" as portrayed in the media.

Between the news, newsmagazines, and the docu-dramas, kindly note the subtext that we are under THREAT, and not just from the mysterious and elusive Abu Musab el Zarqawi and his global network of crazy suicide bombers.

Sweet-faced blonde girls disappear on dream vacations with their friends. Newlywed wives, glowing with their first pregnancy, are ruthlessly murdered by their own husbands. Children are kidnapped by their parents, the nice neighbour next door is a child molester and serial killer.

That concerned teacher your kid loves? Should you be so trusting? And as the Menendez case illustrated so graphically, you can't even count on your kids not to murder you in your sleep!!!

Those nice natives you used to enjoy meeting during your summer vacation? Now you wouldn't risk it. They could be members of a radical terrorist cell. They might blow themselves up for no reason, killing you at the same time, because they hate your freedom.

What with armed gangs roaming the streets in that neighbourhood you're scared to go into, drugs infesting schools and nannies shaking babies to death, it's all random, and too frightening to handle.

I subscribed to the National Geographic Channel because I thought it would help my kids learn about and love their planet. Instead, I found that it mostly consists of graphic images of predators (some of which I had thought of as cute, including chimpanzees) ripping the flesh of their still squirming prey.

Another 'educational show' on National Geographic recounts "Seconds from Disaster" --a meticulous reconstruction of the last moments of oblivious victims, before a man-made or natural disaster ended their lives.

And notice how "crime shows" don't seem to consider theft and fraud to be crimes, since they are exclusively about murder? And even simple murder isn't good enough for the ubiquitous crime shows -- now it's likely to be murder with mutilation, some really sick twist to the thing, with close-ups of a revoltingly realistic corpse.

Be afraid! But don't ask why! Because you'll get really dumb answers. I still haven't quite figured out if all the pundits and analysts are in on the plot or just zombies.

Either way, you're out of luck if you're looking for any intelligent analysis or context for the ceaseless horrors. Like in those dark scary tunnels at theme parks, the boogeyman's face appears suddenly, screaming out of the dark, then falling back into the darkness without a trace.

Complementing the ceaseless fearmongering, are the apalling bottom-feeder talk-shows and the so-called reality shows, which seem designed to erode what's left of human dignity, integrity and taste. For money or fame, contestants reveal to the world how far they're willing to degrade and humiliate themselves and/or others.

Sitcoms reduce friendship and family ties to a bunch of clever one-liners and a canned laugh-track, creating a society of passive, socially-inept, attention-deficient voyeurs.

Soap operas and shows like "Desperate Housewives" have replaced the social ties of real people and real neighborhoods.

I grew up at a time when children's programming was pretty much limited to saturday mornings. How much easier it is for kids to click the remote for 24/7 access to easy, undemanding entertainment. How much harder for parents to convince them to make an effort to create their own fun and experiences. Unless the parents are watching their own tv in their bedroom, believing that the platitudes, sound-bites and cheap laughs are an adequate substitute for culture. Or real life.

Without a variety of first-hand, as opposed to vicarious, experiences from which to extract wisdom, without a network of family and real friends (as opposed to "Friends") to provide an emotional safety-net, without culture to provide a larger context for one's own life, it is with relief and gratitude that we turn to Our Leaders for wisdom and guidance.

Makes me think of those poor, doomed (one way or the other) boys and girls rushing to enlist so they can "protect our freedoms", cheered on by their flag-waving families.

It was probably 35 years ago that I read a quote by black activist Julius Lester:

"You have to deal with reality, or it will deal with you."

Today's news was full of 'warnings' on the economy; when the Associated Press uses terms like 'economic nightmare' you gotta wonder what's just around the next corner.

You can live happy as that proverbial clam (never could figure out why clams are happy, they just sit around and then get made into chowder) with your staggering debt by making interest only payments on your monster house and the minimum payment on your credit cards. But if the economy goes south, and some experts think it's headed for Tierra del Fuego, you are SCREWED.

You can float along in the dreamworld that you have Constitutional rights until they come in the night and disappear you and maybe in 20-30 years your mom will be standing on a plaza somewhere as a reminder they never found your remains (as frequently happens when people are, say, tossed out of airplanes.)

Let's face it, people aren't going to be able to watch that big screen high def flat panel devilvision after it's been repo'd by the store or sold by the bankruptcy trustee, and when you're in a Gitmo-style pen or a mass grave or flailing in mid-air over the ocean, the last thing you're going to be thinking is "Gosh, now I'll never know who's America's Next Top Model!"

Nah, you'll be thinking about the same thing those people who went off the 90th floor of the WTC that sunny September morning 4 years ago and hurtled head first, repp ties and DKNY skirts flapping in the breeze:

We have an entire nation of people whose mental picture of 'reality' is made from teevee and movies and crappy novels and tabloid stories instead of from actual personal experience. That's why we are in thrall to 'experts' to 'interpret reality' for us, and so vulnerable to their bogus interpretations.

I have worked in a hospital. I know ER is bunk. I have worked in law. I know the legal shows are bunk (all but "The Law Firm" which sank like a stone after 2 epi's cuz it WAS law as actually practiced, tedium not glamor). I have worked in publishing, in universities, in retail, in a high tech corporation. I've done everything from emptying bedpans to writing a chapter of the American Bar Association Antitrust Manual. I'm a two time cancer survivor who's still alive because I didn't listen to my doctor, and I've won several legal cases as my own attorney that I was told were against unbeatable opponents but I knew I could win.

I know how the world works. Yet I spend my days and far into the night frustrated because I'm surrounded by people who live in imaginary worlds and the left/progressives do this just as much as the rightwingnuts, it's just a different "Fantasy Island".

This is why I KNOW the American people are in for one HELL of a shock when suddenly Reality with a capital R decides to deal with them.

....about the imaginary little daughter of the imaginary soldier in Iraq (almost said imaginary Iraq, that too--what we get here in America from our 'embeds' who are 'in bed' with BushCo)...what shocked me more than the hoax was the excuses made for it, the idea that the reporter who may or may not have been part of it but enabled it for TWO YEARS will not have his career hurt by it...and that the faculty adviser should never have 'interfered' by asking if fact checking had in fact been done...and that people should 'feel bad' for the paper for being fooled instead of holding the paper responsible for fooling THEM.

the thing is, we`re all disgusted with how empty t.v. programming is but we demanded it to be this way. it is a reflection of who we are. if we want different programming we have to be different recievers. all the clever and poetic observations have to be turned in on ourselves and we have to stop asking for more paris hilton.....otherwise we`ll get more paris hilton. jesus christ people, paris fucking hilton, is that the best we can do?

2. Get rid of your TV. If that is absolutely impossible for you, put the TV in your bedroom, or other place where the child(ren) will not go or are forbidden to go. Never let the child watch with you. (2 adults must be in the home if one is to watch TV, unless the child is sleeping.) If the child insists on being able to watch, have it be special occasions only, and watch with him/her. Be involved and interested in what you watch, and comment on it, in whatever way you like. Pick the programs, make up a schedule - if that is your style - and let the child choose as well. Turn occasional TV watching into a semi-creative activity with adult input, learning about stories, characters, filming, etc.

If your home is too small for such arrangments, make a TV booth (a decorated cardboard box will do...) and shut it away, and try to follow the same rules, unveiling it only at particular times. Never ever leave a TV on in a family room or kitchen while other activities are taking place.

Children under two should never watch TV (or video, movies..) at all. Repeat: children under two...

(3. Concerns the management of illness and pain.)

Children brought up to the age of 6 under these conditions are less likely to fall prey to abusers or find themselves in ‘bad’ situations. They will have high bodily integrity, know when they are being hurt (even psychologically), know how to defend themselves and how to speak out. They will be smart and independent.

On the seemingly recent surge of abductions: May 6 of this year, cult operatives sent by those who programmed/terroized me throughout my childhood, and apparantly don't want to let go of me, tried to abduct my 17 yr old daughter in downtown Chicago when she was on a choir trip. Luckily, they weren't successful. I haven't had TV in years, but see bits and pieces of it at work and since then have noticed these abduction stories very frequently. I had to ask myself, Is there a recent upswing in abductions? or Are they just reporting these things more now for some reason? or Am I just noticing it because of my recent experience? What do you think?

You can see the full story of what happened to my daughter at my blog. The post is entitled, "chilling reality". www.mysteriousjourneys.blogspot.com

Is it safe for me to assume that when America hits the rock bottom scum ring of the toilet, that NO other country will be affected - or that none of this "America" only illness can also be happening in other countries?

Is it just us (America)? Are we the only victims of this disease? If so, why?

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sweet god, I find incredibally ironic looking at all the advertisements at the bottom of the comments, and I believe that once amerika (as some folks cleverly spell it) collapses, it will drag many countries down with it, because it's such an economical superpower many countries have shitloads of money tied up in amerika, and when amerika collapses all these other economies will collapse creating a domina like effect, with countries connected to countries connected to the US also suffering incrediable damage to their economies, and plunging the world possibly into a almost primitive state, where ther remains of high society are there but savages live within it, bug cement buildings inhabited by tribes of spear weilding people, and then we will all be on equal footing again. I dunno, just some random ranting, felt it was at least slightly relevant, I also love your blogs, they are incredibally intriguing.......buy buy buy everything!!